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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22583923">paint you a morning of gold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee'>jestbee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:41:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,711</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22583923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I ain't ridden a bike since I was a kid," Eddie tells him, "I'll fall."</p>
<p>"You're not gonna fall, Eds."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Obsessivelymoody Birthday fics 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>paint you a morning of gold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivelymoody/gifts">obsessivelymoody</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy birthday, Moody! </p>
<p>You wrote me kickthestickz and so I thought I'd give reddie a go for you. (Plot twist: now I love them)</p>
<p>I hope you have a fantastic day, take it easy!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eddie wakes to a day that reminds him of those in early fall when he was a boy, leaves turning a defiant caramel as the thick heat of summer rolls off the earth toward some other place and time, forgotten for a while. He makes coffee like he always does, staring out at a newly changed season with the faint echo of his mother's voice in his head telling him coffee is dangerous, Eddie, it will stunt your growth. He pours it black-tar strong anyway, like a big <i>'fuck you'</i> to that old hag's reprimand, and then takes two lots of it back to his dim bedroom and lays in his sheets, the gentle snore of Richie beside him. </p>
<p>When Richie stirs it's with a pained groan and a roll towards Eddie, hot sleep-sour breath against his thigh. </p>
<p>"Coffee is next to you," Eddie says. </p>
<p>"I don't wanna," Richie says, in one of his voices. Eddie can't tell which. </p>
<p>"It's Saturday," Eddie points out and Richie grins at him. </p>
<p>They've had the bikes in the garage as long as they've had the garage. It seemed like the thing to put in there, beside the collected tools and boxes of old memories neither of them have the desire to unpack. They'd been bought with the best of intentions, Good Exercise, Eddie had said at the time, but mostly they had been forgotten along with the rest of it. </p>
<p>Richie pumps up the tyres with the wild determination that Eddie always associates with being asked to do something that will make him uncomfortable, and tells him how great it will be. </p>
<p>"An adventure," he says, rubbing the scruff of his stubble, hair a mess Eddie can never hope to tame.</p>
<p>"I ain't ridden a bike since I was a kid," Eddie tells him, "I'll fall."</p>
<p>"You're not gonna fall, Eds." </p>
<p>Eddie is always Eds to Richie. He remembers, vaguely, of thinking it was some kind of secret name, an identity he could shrug into if he needed just a little bit more strength than Eddie Kaspbrak had. </p>
<p>Eds might not fall, but Eddie isn't so sure. </p>
<p>"Anyway, if you do, I'll catch you."</p>
<p>They don't have the spacious hills and dips of buttfuck nowhere to explore anymore. What they have is the suburbs and a neat lawn that Richie cuts with a small push along mower in the summer; short sleeves baring his arms to the harsh sun while he complains about the thing cutting out every so often when he's too ambitious with the speed. </p>
<p>"Where are we gunna go?" Eddie asks. </p>
<p>"Somewhere," Richie tells him. </p>
<p>They drive for an hour with the bikes strapped to the back of the car, and find some sprawling land to bike through. It's a packed lane made of loose pebbles and sandy dirt, up in the hills, nothing like the wild expanse they used to conquer, but enough for two middle aged men to handle. </p>
<p>Richie parks the car and swings his leg over his bike, acting like it hasn't been twenty years since the last time he did it. </p>
<p>"You're off your rocker," Eddie tells him, chuckling around it despite himself. He pushes his own bike a few feet, warming the cool handlebars under his palms. </p>
<p>"Maybe so," Richie says. His voice might be his when he says it, but he's already pushing his toes to the pedals and moving away, so Eddie isn't sure.</p>
<p>Eddie takes a breath. He fits in the seat because the guy who'd sold them the bikes had done the proper thing and measured them for it, which Eddie had only had a faint knowledge of being necessary at the time. </p>
<p>His heart pounds in his throat with that unrestrained fear of being a child, but Richie is up ahead, looking back over his shoulder and telling Eddie to follow him. So he does. </p>
<p>There isn't any need for them to rush. It is a quiet fall day, the earth beneath their tyres changing from one chapter to the next, another page of their lives turned over, but there's no devil for them to beat today. Just a light breeze and Richie's laughter echoing through the bushes. </p>
<p>They've been going about twenty minutes when Richie decides the flat path is too uneventful for whatever giddy-up he has in his body today. He takes a sharp turn off the path and over some rocky grassland. Eddie doesn't follow, just watches him disappear behind the overgrown fauna and sticks defiantly to the designated bikeway. </p>
<p>"You're mad, Rich," Eddie tells him, not for the first time.</p>
<p>"Maybe so." </p>
<p>Richie's voice floats to him through the greenery, but Eddie has lost sight of him. He's alone on the silent path, his tyres rushing beneath him with a riotous hiss, his own breathing loud in the depths of his ears. </p>
<p>He suddenly feels so alone. Dread claws up the back of his neck, making it prickle. The horizon wavers, and Eddie has a clear vision of something jumping out of those bushes at him, something maleficent; its only intent to do him harm. </p>
<p>"Rich?" He calls, trying to keep both his tone even and his eyes on that spot up ahead where the path curves off to the left with what comes next unseen and feared. </p>
<p>There is no answer and Eddie convinces himself he can't hear the sound of Richie's progress through the bushes anymore. He is alone on this track, unprotected and vulnerable. </p>
<p>Eddie isn't going to make it to the bend. Whether subconsciously, or simply well-timed, his tyre hits a loose rock and twists in his grasp. The bike tilts sideways and Eddie with it, shoulder colliding with the dusty path, knee crashing down on something jagged. </p>
<p>He falls through the air, a short drop in reality but feeling for all the world like the earth has disappeared and he won't ever reach it. There is no one to catch him, Richie is too far away, Eddie is alone and falling, falling, falling, never to hit the ground.</p>
<p>And then he does.</p>
<p>"Fuck," Eddie yells. His deep, adult voice echoes back at him off the hills, but laying in a heap with his knee pulled up to his chest Eddie feels little more than a child. </p>
<p>"Eds?" </p>
<p>Just as Eddie is abandoning a grown-up response to the situation and allowing himself to cry just the tiniest bit, Richie appears beside him, pulling his brakes on and dismounting from the bike. He drops it on the floor next to Eddie's, tipped over and abandoned in favour of kneeling next to Eddie and pulling him upright. </p>
<p>Eddie is breathing heavy, gasping at breaths the way he does sometimes. Richie is a little late, but he's here to catch him all the same.</p>
<p>"I can't breathe, Rich," Eddie tells him. </p>
<p>Richie's hand is splayed on his back, a warm weight for Eddie to focus on while blood seeps through the knee of his blue jeans. </p>
<p>"You can breathe," Richie says. </p>
<p>"Told you… I was gunna… fall." Eddie struggles with the words, lungs catching on every single one with a rattle. "Need my aspirator."</p>
<p>Richie rolls his eyes, "you don't need no aspirator."</p>
<p>Eddie has a quiet voice in his head that tells him he doesn't need it, but a louder more matronly one that crops up in times of stress insists that he does. He lifts his eyes and blinks at Richie until Richie understands that while might not <i>need</i> it, he would feel better for it all the same.</p>
<p>"I do. I need it. I can't breathe." </p>
<p>Richie sighs, dragging in his own lungful of breath with no effort at all. He reaches into his back pocket, coming back to show Eddie what he got. On his palm, nestled atop the lines of it that Eddie knows so well, is Eddie's aspirator. </p>
<p>Eddie stares, warm blood trickling down his leg, his chest hurting with each laborious breath, but warm in his heart from the fond long-suffering expression in Richie's eyes. </p>
<p>He'll mock him later, always does, but for now he offers relief on the flat of his hand and Eddie takes it.</p>
<p>"Thanks."</p>
<p>Richie grunts, holding back some kind of jibe just like Eddie knew he would, and he's grateful for Richie holding back a Good One for him. He hasn't always. </p>
<p>Eddie breathes a bit easier afterwards. Though whether that is the restorative powers of the medicine, or the soft back and forth of Richie's hand on his spine, Eddie can't be sure. </p>
<p>"You ready to go back?" Richie asks. </p>
<p>He doesn't ask what made Eddie fall. They both know the dark things that lurk in the recesses of their memory; spidery, clawing things that wake them in the night, sweaty and scared with the images already fading. The kind of thing Bill Denbrough puts in books that Eddie refuses to read. </p>
<p>"Yeah," Eddie says, and gets to his feet. </p>
<p>They push their bikes back the way they came for a spell. The cross bar is hard against Eddie's hip, knee throbbing under his clothes. There's a bright red blood stain blooming on his pant leg with every step, and a sharp, vivid ache haloed around his kneecap. He feels small again, childlike. </p>
<p>"Best leave the adventuring behind, eh?" Richie says, "maybe we're too old for it."</p>
<p>"We ain't too old," Eddie tells him. </p>
<p>Richie's face is drawn and Eddie's aspirator is pushing a bump into the fabric of his back pocket again. Eddie reaches down deep to find Eds and all the strength he has, like a secret identity, and levers his leg up over the crossbar. </p>
<p>"Race ya back," he calls, shooting off in the direction of the car. </p>
<p>He makes sure to grip the handlebars tight and steer around loose rocks that might run him a mischief.</p>
<p>Richies swears loudly, and Eddie hears the sound of him scrabbling back onto the seat of his bike, the mechanical tick-tick-tick of his chain warming up again. Eddie pedals hard, cold air pumping in and out of his lungs quick and easy, the breeze of this soft fall day whistling past his ears. </p>
<p>"Gunna catch you, Eds," Richie calls. </p>
<p>Yeah, Eddie thinks, Richie is probably going to catch him. He always does.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come find me on <a href="http://jestbee.tumblr.com">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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